Meet the world’s first AI DJ brain, Muru. Inspired by an Aboriginal Australian term glossed as “journey,” the Sydney-based music technology company transforms metadata, the basic information about every digital music file, and generates extended playlists to fit every taste, every dynamic, by disrupting the way music is classified in the digital realm.
Muru playlists can be generated in a matter of seconds, even when they span hours, by selecting genres or artists as beginning and ending points. It can work on top of any streaming service. Muru can start cocktail hour with some cool jazz and morphs to deep house by the time everyone’s done with dessert. Users can nudge the playlist to evolve in real time, as they adjust parameters from energy to era to popularity. The approach is streamlined and intuitive, yet reflects years of serious thinking into how we relate and move to music.
Muru’s Journeys (the company’s name for its playlists) unfold so seamlessly thanks to a proprietary approach to music classification, one that embraces both the wonders of algorithms and the centuries-old study of what music does to people. Muru aims to make machines think more like dedicated DJs--and find the perfect groove in the process.
Muru allows you to play with four parameters to shift the playlist’s vibe: energy, era, popularity (for when you want more obscure or more popular tracks), and tempo. It lets you favorite or skip tracks, taking things beyond the thumbs up or down, telling the app whether it’s the song or the artist you object to.
“We’ve really worked to understand how to improve experience, by digging way deeper into the digital catalog and social data, by generating rules that reflect people’s response to music, and by creating something people can use easily to hear music that they love,” Johnson states. “And even with the same genres to start and finish, you’ll never get the same playlist twice.”
Guest Info
"Nicc Johnson, Chief Musicologist and Founder of Muruhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/niccjohnson/ With more than 16 years’ experience as a Musicologist, Professional DJ and Music Curator/Consultant, Johnson has created thousands of playlists. He was a resident DJ at world’s most successful nightclub, Pacha Ibiza and classically trained in Music Theory and Sound Engineering.
As a consultant he focused on Brand Identity and building the right music environment for small/medium type businesses like bars, cafes, restaurants, retail stores, barber shops etc. He now uses tech to apply this experience at Muru.